Best Way to Transer Video Files From Desktop to Laptop?

Prolly not a great idea cos the access speeds through the USB port to your Hard Drive aren't going to be great.

Have you tried zipping up the folder or something? Does the audio link to a specific folder? (so like its looking for D:My Crap and you've moved it to your laptop and C:My Crap)

Have you tried it with another computer and made sure its not a problem with your laptop.

Do both machines have the same codecs?

Best way to transfer the files between the two is to set up a network

Higher firewire(Firewire 800, high drive speed) drives can be pretty decent for external storage, though I would reccomend transferring the files locally anyways before editing them.

Seablade

If you will only be doing any editing at your house something to the effect of NFS, but for windows or mac whichever you use. But past that since it is not an option if I udnerstand you correctly, I wonder if something like CVS might do it for video, what it does for code. I am sure there is something similar, all it is is a library function, people can check out parts of code and when they are done working on it they check it back in and it updates itself.

What I typically do though is I just update my server by hand for my audio files at any rate, though I dont know if that would be to much of a problem for video or not, I dont do much of that really.

Seablade

Eh sorry I go off on tangents a bit

CVS is a versioning system for programmer's code. I was curious if anyone knew if it would do the same for anything else, as I dont have but so much experience with it and it has always been with code in my experience, but the point is to keep everyone as up to date as possible by having people just use one command and it automaticly updates as needed. So pretty much I was thinking with my fingers

NFS is a networking system, that over good networks shares drives from a server, and automaticly caches files locally as you access them(Or at least version 4? will, I am not so sure about the others) That way using NFS you get the best of both worlds, locally caching but it stays stored all on your server, downside though is that you are restricted to your network for editing the stuff unless you actually download it onto your laptop. Other downside is I dont know if it is availiable for anything but linux... sorry I am a linux geek on top of an audio dweeb.

What I currently do though, especially when I am working with others, is I just update stuff by hand. I set up a FTP server for when I am working with others and we just update files by hand when we edit them, or if working by myself i just keep a version on my server and backup my laptop(Where I do the editing) to it after a set period of time. Again linux networking tools make this easier, but the ability to do this pretty easily should eb there in windows somewhere.

Sorry I cant be of more help though, but at least for audio a firewire 800 drive should serve you well, I just am not to sure how well it will work for video which I am fairly sure requires a good amount more bandwidth.

Seablade

CVS stuff will work for any kind of digital data, but it's a bit needlessly complex for a two-PC system used only by one person.

Hmm good to know, thanks.

Seablade

Just out of my own curiosity, what type of drive did you go with anyways?

And congrats on figurin out how to do what you wanted

Seablade

I've got two Samsung 160GB 7200RPM drives for my music work. Dead silent (they have fluid dynamic bearings...no real bearings). So quiet, in fact, that the external drive case's fans are far louder than the drives themselves.

Videoediting with laptop and external drive

Ive had good luck using www.caldrives.com external firewire/usb2.0 drives. There are also other specialty external firewire/usb2.0 drives such as G Drive from www.g-technology.com (has the new Firewire800). Stay away from the comman namebrand external drives for videoediting (in my opinion). The specialty drives incorporate special technology like Oxford 911 etc that goes beyond Western Digital, Seagate drives etc. those external drives are good for data, but generally dont handle the high bandwidth of video. I personally have had great sucess going between a laptop and desktop using my Caldrive - no dropouts. I now have 3 desktops setup in my computer room, and i switch the drive between each system no problem (as well as the laptop). A great way to go and its very quick. Mike

If you have 1394, just capture to your external hard drive and just edit/render/export video from there.

I use my ipod to transfer large files up to 38 gigs. quick and efficient if you dont wanna setup all the network configs
Or you can set the security level on both hdd's drive c:/ to "share" in your home network and transfer or copy the files over

Or burn the files to dvd and transfer over. am i missing something?